Python wasn't phased out of consumer-facing applications because it was never in. Google has a lot of machines, but those machines receive a lot of traffic. Efficiency matters, and byte-for-byte, cycle-for-cycle, Java is more efficient than Python.
Don't ask me why Google didn't throw lots of resources at making Python more efficient like they did with JS and V8. I often wonder that myself.
they did throw a significant amount of resources at python with the creation of unladen swallow. In the end i believe it was decided (due to GIL issues, and other language design choices in python) that it was never going to match up performance wise, so unladen swallow was canceled, and Google began to move away from python.
Don't ask me why Google didn't throw lots of resources at making Python more efficient like they did with JS and V8. I often wonder that myself.